A journey down the rabbit hole of Rubik's-style puzzles

Over the past month, my F2L speed has increased considerably — now averaging about 20-22 seconds…and dropping. My cross can get faster, but it’s not terrible at 6-ish seconds.

That leaves the last layer as the big x-factor. I know a handful of OLLs and PLLs. Still, I’m two-looking the orientation stage and then two-(and-sometimes-even-three-)looking the permutation stage.

I haven’t tried to pick up new algorithms for a while, mostly because I feel like I’ve already picked the low hanging fruit. (A glutton for punishment, I did recently learn Na Perm but then stalled at the tougher Nb.)

Then I ran into this very good video (on a great Youtube channel) breaking down the Y Perm:

The notion that it is just a combination of two OLLs (#37 and #33, respectively) intrigued me enough to keep going. After a long morning, I can now add two new OLLs and one new PLL to the repertoire:

Y PERM (OLL 37 + OLL 33)

F (R U’ R’ U’) (R U R’) F’(R U R’ U’) (R’ F R F’)

OLL #37(Mounted Fish)

F (R U’ R’ U’) (R U R’) F’

OLL #33(Key)

(R U R’ U’) (R’ F R F’)

(R U R’ U’) Lw’ (U R U’)

Although I do find Y Perm easier than expected, it’s still a long algorithm. I’m averaging about 5 seconds at the moment.